I can't answer the second question, but the answer to the first is a resounding "yes!"

Let's read a little bit of the story:

SEATTLE (CBS Seattle) — Believing if you are on a “highway to hell” could impact whether or not if you commit a crime.

A study published in the scientific journal PLoS One by University of Oregon’s Azim Shariff and University of Kansas’s Mijke Rhemtulla finds that people who believe in hell are less likely to commit a crime . . .

Ouch!

I just got whiplash.

The headline of this story promised me evidence that people who believe in heaven are more likely to commit crime. Now it's telling me that people who believe in hell are less likely to commit crime.

. . . while people who believe in heaven more likely are to get in trouble with the law.

Okay . . . we're starting to return to the theme of the headline.

But now it sounds like there are two groups of people: those who believe in hell and those who believe in heaven.

Maybe we should have these two groups of people battle each other on a reality TV show. They could live on an island and have tugs of war and eat icky bugs and stuff.

Or was that LOST?

Just precisely where are these heaven-believers and hell-believers supposed to live?

Doesn't the Christian faith (among others) teach that there is both a heaven and a hell?

I suppose that the study means to divide people who believe only in heaven and not hell from those who believe in both. But if that's what the study does, then that's what the story should say. It shouldn't convey the impression it does.

It's just bad writing.

On the other hand, if the study itself is parsing the data that way then Team Bigfoot is even further up the science creek without a paddle.

And we're dealing with not just bad writing but bad science.

The two professors collected data for belief in hell, heaven and God from the World and European Values Surveys that were conducted between 1981 until 2007 with 143,197 participants based in 67 countries. They compared the data to the mean standardized crime rate in those countries based on homicides, robberies, rapes, kidnappings, assaults, thefts, auto thefts, drug crimes, burglaries and human trafficking.

“[R]ates of belief in heaven and hell had significant, unique, and opposing effects on crime rates,” Shariff and Rhemtulla found in the study. “Belief in hell predicted lower crime rates … whereas belief in heaven predicted higher crime rates.”

Uh-huh.

Not exactly a reassuring quotation. Makes it sound like the study may have biases and weird data parsing built into it. But maybe not. Maybe it's just a quotation out of context and the study is fine.

They also found that a recent social psychological experiment found that Christian participants who believe in a forgiving God gave themselves more money for the study.

“Participants in the punishing God and both human conditions overpaid themselves less than 50 cents more than what they deserved for their anagrams, and did not statistically differ from the neutral condition, those who wrote about a forgiving God overpaid themselves significantly more-nearly two dollars,” the study found.

Shariff and Rhemtulla believe that the study raises “important questions about the potential impact of religious beliefs on global crime.”

Well, I think most people could have told you that if a person believes his actions will have only good outcomes (heaven, forgiving God) that he will be more likely to break rules, while if he believes his actions can have consequences, he will break fewer ones.

That's not exactly a shocking discovery.

And it would be interesting to know how much money was spent on "proving" this.

Still, it's nice to have scientific(-ish) concurrence with something moralists have been saying for centuries.

Why is it that “God’s Own Party,” the Republicans tend to draw a higher number of hookers, johns and rent the highest number of porn flics in their hotels, motels and no-tels when they have their conventions? Maybe the OSAS guys can only take so much hypocritical bloviating from their own podiums.

Posted by Reynaldo on Sunday, Aug, 5, 2012 5:58 PM (EST):

Hi Patrick! Here’s a prayer for those who are weak in spirit and not to be caught in the web of lies. Most Gracious Triune God Thank you for the amazing grace You bestow on us all to strenghten our faith and to believe in you. You are All-Just and You reward the faithful among us by being with YOU in heaven eternally and those who are sinfull among us and ignore your most sincere offer of the grace of repentance and forgiveness are dealt accordingly in hell. Almighty Triune God embrace these sinners with your might to let them realize the truth about heaven and hell and heaven can be theirs if they’ll repent and ask forgiveness of their sins. We ask these in the name of Jesus Christ, YOUR SON and our SAVIOR. Amen

Posted by Mouse on Thursday, Jul, 19, 2012 4:51 PM (EST):

I have long ago stopped trusting much if not most of the studies reported by the mainstream media (for lack of a better term). Polls too, for that matter. And after repeatedly seeing distorted information and faulty methodology from academia and in the media, I basically take most of what I hear with a grain of salt. Unless I can evaluate the details for myself (which most of the time I don’t care to do), I assume it could be flawed, either as conducted or as reported.

Posted by Daniel on Monday, Jul, 16, 2012 11:13 PM (EST):

Wow, Gloria. That’s quite a spurious and bigoted comment. Are you afraid of Jews too? I guess the same goes for Muslims. You like spending your nights trolling faith based websites? If you could get past your prejudice you might find enjoyable company with a “gang” of Catholics.

Posted by Gloria on Monday, Jul, 16, 2012 7:38 PM (EST):

Hello! Rememeber the 911 terrorists and suicide bombers in general believe in heaven and that their horrific acts are done so they can get there.
I would rather meet a gang of scientists over a gang of Catholic any dark night.

Posted by Eileen on Tuesday, Jul, 10, 2012 11:47 AM (EST):

I would suggest that people who commit crimes would say they believe in hell for the same reason it appeals to them to wear devils and skulls on t-shirts, etc. I don’t think religion really comes into it at all.

Posted by manticore on Tuesday, Jul, 3, 2012 7:32 PM (EST):

This seems no more intelligent than (supoposedly) scientific tests of the efficacy of intercessory prayer. The naivety of such an approach is depressing.

Posted by Proteios on Wednesday, Jun, 27, 2012 11:57 PM (EST):

I missed the link to the actual study. As opposed to the media version. Can you and the link. This is important fr us to assess as the only thing I can ful appreciate from this article is the mainstream media misrepresents religion AND science. So please provide tht link.

Posted by Mr. Patton on Wednesday, Jun, 27, 2012 3:28 PM (EST):

Having read the research article “Divergent Effects of Beliefs in Heaven and Hell on National Crime Rates” from PLoS ONE, their theory and the prediction it makes is supported the data they used. Until another independent study is conducted to collaborate their findings, this will be one of many such studies with a very low degree of reliability.

Posted by Johnno on Wednesday, Jun, 27, 2012 12:04 PM (EST):

Well there might be something to it… and by that I mean the following…

People who believe that ‘everyone automatically goes to heaven as there is no hell’ are more likely to commit crimes/break rules.

This is a problem of the Protestant ‘Once saved/always saved’ or ‘anyone who believes in Jesus regardless of his sins will go to heaven’ philosophy.

It’s also a problem for the moral relativistic crowd and those who believe that hell does not exist but some fuzzy transcendental afterlife that everyone goes to regardless of religion, sin and belief.

So more accurately, I’d predict that those who believe in hell AND heaven will be less likely to commit a crime. But those who believe in Heaven ONLY, or an erroneous doctrine of salvation, will be more likely to commit a crime as there is no consequence…

But you don’t need some expensive study to tell you that…

Posted by deds on Wednesday, Jun, 27, 2012 11:23 AM (EST):

Dear Writer even your own commentaryu sounded very unserious and confuding. Try to imagine that your reading audience is beyond your cliches boundary.. Your approach was just as opinionated.. i just lost interest because of your dramatisation of the grammar… use simple straight to the point language next time please…

Posted by GW on Wednesday, Jun, 27, 2012 8:26 AM (EST):

If you torture it enough, the data WILL confess!

Posted by Patrick Rampeta on Wednesday, Jun, 27, 2012 3:49 AM (EST):

In order to get as many followers as possible, the devil will use every trick available, those which are known and those which are not known to man. In the process he will use everybody available, even those whom we consider to be well learned such as scientists. Feeding people lies, lies and more lies is something which the devil likes, or the distortion of truth. So as to cathch those whose faith is not deeply rooted and their foundation not strong, so let us pray for those weak in spirit not to believe in all these lies and to get caught in this web of lies. Let us pray that their faith does not falter, but instead to take root on the firm foudation who is
Jesus Christ.

Considering that #1 is basically a subset of #2 (i.e. for 99% of people in #1 they are also in #2), this strongly implies that belief in heaven in the absence of a belief in hell leads to very bad actions. That is because a good chunk of #2 is exhibiting good behavior (as they are in #1). Thus the people for whom 2=T,1=F must be doing a lot of bad things to counteract the effect of people for whom 2=T,1=T.

Posted by Daniel on Tuesday, Jun, 26, 2012 9:20 PM (EST):

If these are the kind of studies being pushed by propagandistic media with “important questions on crime” , the labeling of believers as “stupid” or believing “fairy tales” and the “studies” linking terrorism and extreme beliefs with religion, then the War on Religion is just beginning. If we remain silent and don’t respond to this blatant attempt to spread lies to the people in the name of atheism, who knows what is down the road? If history is any indication, people of the major faiths may very well end up in camps one of these days.

Posted by Rick DiNapoli on Tuesday, Jun, 26, 2012 6:11 PM (EST):

Another shocking Headline that has about as much relevance.

Science: People who drink water will die.

Posted by tjl on Tuesday, Jun, 26, 2012 1:27 PM (EST):

No need for social study here, I think it’s common sense. Even if the study is true, which I seriously doubt, the reason is because saying you believe doesn’t necessarily mean true faith, and faith alone doesn’t make us do what’s right. It’s love that saves, not just saying you believe, and believers generally love a lot more than unbelievers. Who created hospitals? hospices? private education for the poor? what undergirds the Bill of Rights? Who are the Mother Teresa’s of the world? Atheists and atheism? No- faith in God.

Posted by Peter Shaw on Tuesday, Jun, 26, 2012 12:30 PM (EST):

As a social scientist (a retired economist), I believe there are some basics of any science that should be before every scientist’s eyes at all times. (1) The answers you get depend on the questions you ask. (2) If your experiment is slanted toward a particular outcome, deliberately or not, that’s what the outcome will probably be. Or, most bluntly: (3) Garbage in, garbage out.

Posted by Leticia on Tuesday, Jun, 26, 2012 10:31 AM (EST):

God doesn’t send people to hell. We choose it by not choosing God. We have free will. I don’t believe this data because if you believe in heaven, you likely believe in hell. By purposely committing a crime you don’t choose God, by not choosing God, you choose the alternative, hell. To believe in God and to choose God are two different things. Even Satan believes and trembles.

Posted by Leo on Tuesday, Jun, 26, 2012 9:27 AM (EST):

They compared the religiosity of a country with the crime rate of the country - the saying “there are no atheists in fox holes” comes to mind…

Posted by Mary Marie on Tuesday, Jun, 26, 2012 8:51 AM (EST):

I agree Ismael. There are many factors that can influence or sway results of experiments and studies. One common one is also whether the study is done randomly among all economic groups, genders, age groups, religious backgrounds, criminal backgrounds, etc, or whether they were taken from a certain group and claimed to be random samples. For example, if you wanted to know what percentage of Americans suffered from anxiety or depression, you wouldn’t gather data solely from an area that has just suffered a major disaster, because this would be bias. Yet, so much bias goes into these studies.

Posted by Joanp62 on Tuesday, Jun, 26, 2012 7:15 AM (EST):

Hey, Jimmy, on a side note, the program where people live on an island and have tugs of war and eat icky bugs and stuff is Survivor. Lost was not a reality show and was actually a pretty good drama, IMO. I sure do miss it.

Posted by Tom R on Tuesday, Jun, 26, 2012 6:29 AM (EST):

When a hypothesis is poorly phrased, no amount of “study” will test it, because no one knows what it is. That was the point of this “work.” The hypothesis could have been precisely phrased, as in, “Are religious people more prone to commit criminal acts, punishable by law, than the community at large.” You could then break down the term “religious” to those of different faiths.

The only problem with that is that such a study is difficult, especially if you want to insult religion, which is the basis for modern societal law.

Posted by LarryD on Tuesday, Jun, 26, 2012 6:14 AM (EST):

I am a post-doc physicist… and I can only report a famous quote (although no one is truly sure of who first said it): ““There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.”“

This seems to be a common trait of the extreme Left: If you don’t like the truth, just make up your own “truth” and voila! Then it has to be true, right?

Posted by Ismael on Tuesday, Jun, 26, 2012 5:27 AM (EST):

Well said Jimmy.

As you also seem to ask: Can we call this ‘science’?

I am a post-doc physicist… and I can only report a famous quote (although no one is truly sure of who first said it): ““There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.”“

Now in (experimental) physics, where hard empirical data counts for the money, some already strain their results or even fake them (See the Hendrik Shon schandal).

In ‘soft sciences’ like Psychology or sociology who really much more heavily on statistics… this is even worse.

It is no secret that statistics can be easily manipulated and statistical studies are very tricky to perform correctly.

Take for example: there are very few women who have won the Nobel prize and other significant scientific awards compared to men… hence one would “prove” that women are stupider or worse scientists…

Of course such conclusion is ridiculous (as it ignores many factors), and although the example is heavy-handed, it shows how statistics if done improperly can lead to very faulty results.

Posted by Thomas Collins on Tuesday, Jun, 26, 2012 1:11 AM (EST):

It would be interesting to see a breakdown between Christians who believe God actually DOES send people to Hell and those who don’t.
Likewise what about those who believe in OSAS?

Posted by enness on Monday, Jun, 25, 2012 11:07 PM (EST):

I didn’t realize being overpaid was a crime?

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Jimmy Akin

Jimmy was born in Texas, grew up nominally Protestant, but at age 20 experienced a profound conversion to Christ. Planning on becoming a Protestant pastor or seminary professor, he started an intensive study of the Bible. But the more he immersed himself in Scripture the more he found to support the Catholic faith. Eventually, he entered the Catholic Church. His conversion story, “A Triumph and a Tragedy,” is published in Surprised by Truth. Besides being an author, Jimmy is the Senior Apologist at Catholic Answers, a contributing editor to Catholic Answers Magazine, and a weekly guest on “Catholic Answers Live.”